Description

This is a Poem written by Gerard Arthus; 13 December, 2000. 'Solitary Horsemen ....Reflections On Life In Cyberspace'. Handwritten copy also included in PDF file. Etext created by Gerard Arthus. Hi-resolution TIFF files are archived and can be downloaded. This work was created by Gerard Arthus and is in the Public Domain under the Creative Commons License.

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I liked the poem! It reminded me of The Mentor’s The Conscience of a Hacker.

I had never thought of the world in the way you describe it in your poem. It looks correct! If so, there is indeed something called “progress”!

Perhaps we can see the rise of this new world in a more general context. In the very beginning only brute-force would have mattered. Then intelligence and skill would have mattered more and more -- the intelligence and skill would have increased the power of the ones who possessed it. Now, in very many cases, brute-force is almost irrelevant. But we are going even further: individuals who possess intelligence and skill can often get their way against much larger groups -- even groups possessing much greater temporal power! Such people are obviously the ones who are the core of society in all ages, but now they can even fight groups much more powerful!

In this context (though somewhat unrelated) see Umberto Eco’s comments on Wikileaks releasing the US Embassy cables.